NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
It still wrinkles my brain a little that the guy who played Barack Obama on Key & Peele, the guy who wrote and starred in Keanu, is now one of the best horror writers in the business. Or, more accurately, was probably always one of the best horror writers in the business, I just didn’t know any better1. But it’s undeniable: Jordan Peele knows how to tell a scary story.
He also knows how to film a scary story. I finally got around to seeing Nope recently—it took me so long because the pandemic completely broke me of the habit of going out to a movie2, and my town’s sole movie theater went out of business, leaving me with few convenient options to hit up a theater even if I wanted to. So now I sit like a spider in my twilit home, rubbing my legs together while I wait patiently for movies to show up on a streamer or on-demand service3.
Nope is very good. I didn’t love the ending, to be honest, but I will balance that out by saying that the long, slow-burn set up is brilliant, that Peele has an easy way of constructing fictional universes and populating them with characters who are interesting and fun to hang out with (and who you want to survive), and the sequence when the recently eaten audience members scream their way through Jean Jacket’s gullet is what scientists call fucking terrifying4.
So, overall, a great movie! But there’s an even greater movie inside the one Peele actually delivered, because writers very often bury their best ideas.
GORDY’S HOME!
Look, the whole story about Jean Jacket eating up horses and people and raining their indigestible bits back down onto the ground, and OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) thinking he can use his horse training skills to break Jean Jacket’s spirit is good stuff. But the story I found myself wanting more of is Gordy the homicidal chimp and his best friend Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun)5.
Man, that scene is terrifying in a way Jean Jacket never quite achieves, in my humble opinion. The problem with the Jean Jacket stuff in Nope is that it’s relatively complex—first the characters have to figure out that something is in the air, then they have to figure out the whole stationary cloud business, then they have to figure out that it’s not a ship but an animal, then how looking directly at it triggers it, on and on6. This is a good story—don’t get me wrong. But Gordy is much more visceral. The contrast between the stupid dumb sitcom set and cheery, terrible dialog and Gordy’s murderous flipout is tonally and visually effective, as is Gordy’s ridiculous costuming that hints strongly at a miserable existence7. It’s easy to picture poor Gordy going through his constrained life in a state of irritated bafflement, shucked in and out of bizarre clothes and forced to perform actions he doesn’t understand while people hoot and holler around him8.
Add in the hint of random danger, the idea that something you see and interact with every day can suddenly snap and literally murder you, and I’m sold: I want to see that story. I want a no-edits, continuous shot, 93-minute film of the filming of that final episode of Gordy’s Home! that culminates in that final murder spree. Extra points if it’s shot from Jupe’s POV.
I Like You. That’s Why I’m Going to Kill You Last
It’s that final shot of Gordy that sells me on this. Gordy takes a break after mauling one of the adult actors and sits, confused and tired, wiping blood around himself. Then he turns and looks directly at Jupe (at the camera), and that shit is blood-chilling9.
When the chimp approaches it’s incredibly tense, and the way it grunts and chirps implies that intense confusion—Gordy himself doesn’t quite understand what just happened10. But he sees Ricky hiding under that table, and Gordy wants a moment of connection. He holds out his fist for a bump. He offers a sign of friendship, a redeeming moment that shows you what a sweet, probably abused animal Gordy was before snapping into a blood rage. That is, of course, another theme of the film—that our belief that we can control and predict inscrutably wild beings is arrogance of the first sort, made especially dangerous when we try to coerce those beings into behaving in ways that benefit us and make them miserable.
Gordy’s story carries all the themes of the film more effectively because the motivations are more primal. While Emerald’s (Keke Palmer) obsession with making a profit off of Jean Jacket makes sense from a character point of view, it’s kind of a weird motivation to drive a big portion of the plot in this story11. All that effort for the not entirely reasonable expectation that a blurry film of an alien would make you rich? I am not sold on that.
But Gordy’s story is all about exploitation and survival. Ricky is a child actor, so there are a lot of opportunities to explore how he’s exploited, how he’s forced to perform bizarre, humiliating tricks he doesn’t understand, just like Gordy. Those parallels are gold, Jerry12, and could converge on that sad, confused fist bump in a way that would be more powerful than Jean Jacket eating a large balloon and exploding.
That being said, Nope is better than most of the other films released recently, and any story that inspires 1,000 words of sloppy analysis has something going for it. But writers often focus on their initial concepts, relegating ideas they have in the course of writing to second-tier status, often dooming those ideas to also-ran status when they could definitely be the star of the show, and Gordy in Nope is one of those moments.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Nope fanfic to write.
Next week: When great writing is boring as hell.
You’d think the sheer number of times I’ve been amazed to discover something cool after literally everyone else has known about it for decades would faze my sense of smug superiority, and yet it has had no effect on it whatsoever. I still think very highly of myself.
Did you know other people also go to movies? And often behave like they’re in their own trash-festooned living room? Let’s stop pretending that going to the movies is anything less than a trash experience. I don’t miss it.
I have informed The Duchess not to worry about these spider-like, gnome-like behaviors unless I start referring to things as “My Precious.” Then she is instructed to flee and call the authorities.
For real. I kind of knew I didn’t want to die by being digested while still awake and screaming, but this sequence kind of confirmed it for me.
Jupe is one of those characters that is so funky and weird it shouldn’t work, but it does. Jupe’s Korean Western style, the bizarre amusement park he runs, his whole weird backstory as a child actor who survived a traumatic event — this should really be too much. But Peele handles it with expert precision, and Yeung imbues Jupe with a believable level of sincerity about it all. For example, the way Jupe pivots to describing a Saturday Night Live sketch inspired by his horrifying experience instead of the actual experience is an incredible way to let your audience know that Jupe has disassociated from the moment to a frightening and self-destructive level.
As I said in my previous edition of this Pulitzer-level newsletter, all horror is basically a mystery story that ends very, very badly.
People who dress animals in clothes mystify me, frankly. Would my cats look adorable in ties and tiny hats? Yes! Would they enjoy this experience? No! Folks who have pets should really consider the enjoyment level of the experiences they force on them, honestly. Source: I also do not enjoy wearing adorable outfits for the amusement of others.
I think I just described my own former career as an office drone, and now I am sad.
If you doubt that a chimp could murder you more or less casually, just watch this video of ripped, hairless chimps, and start working on your Chimp Attack Defense Strategy, because there is a non-zero chance you’ll need it when they rise up.
I recognize this expression from every time I have woken up in a Kentucky bus station with a pounding headache and stared at my gaunt features in the bathroom mirror.
There’s a whole meta theme of horror stories relying on patently bizarre motivations to explain why their characters don’t flee to safety the second shit gets weird. Granted, if your characters behaved like sensible human beings you’d have a bunch of very, very short films and stories, but they would be 1,000% more realistic.
So many of my common shorthand expressions are so old and dated I often feel like Grandpa Simpson telling a story. And even that is an old and dated reference and wait, why am I turning to dust —